good morning and welcome to the dinery garden on this monday morning the 19th of october it's in a sense for us a new beginning after several months of following with saint luke through his own gospel and through the acts of the apostles but this week we've been given by our lectionary which tells us what we should be reading a nice little gift the most beautiful to my mind of saint paul's epistles it's the epistle to the philippians and the days of this week up until saturday cover that short epistle and so we shall enjoy that epistle together and think of the letters that paul has been writing to friends around the world as he knows it and to the places that she has known we'll think about his own context and situation shall we say as we also think about our own obviously our hearts and minds are still filled with sympathy and horror from the parisians and the french nation after the appalling murder of the school teacher there and we pray for all of them as they come to terms with that and also let's pray for a realization of the appalling cost of terrorism in the sense of demonizing particular communities which have nothing of terrorism within their heart and soul but are served by people who think that they are supporting them by violent acts so let's keep that in mind let's keep also in mind those who are growing impatient with the threats of new lockdowns and the sense of activity which will keep them from one another and all those things we keep in mind as we say our morning prayers on this monday morning wherever you are feel welcome bring your own intentions and your own prayers in heart and mind o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise may christ the daystar dawn in our hearts and triumph over the shades of night blessed are you creator of all to you be praise and glory forever as your dawn renews the face of the earth bringing light and life to all creation may we rejoice in this day you have made and as we wake refreshed from the depths of sleep open our eyes to behold your presence and strengthen our hands to do your will that the world may rejoice and give you praise blessed be god father son and holy spirit blessed be god forever the night has passed and the day lies open before us let us pray with one heart and mind does we rejoice in the gift of this new day so may the light of your presence oh god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm on this 19th morning of the month is psalm 96 sing to the lord a new song sing to the lord all the earth sing to the lord and bless his name turn out his salvation from day to day declare his glory among the nations and his wonders among all peoples for great is the lord and greatly to be praised he is more to be feared than all gods for all the gods of the nations are but idols it is the lord who made the heavens honor and majesty are before him power and splendor are in his sanctuary ascribe to the lord you families of the peoples ascribe to the lord honor and strength ascribe to the lord the honor due to his name bring offerings and come into his courts o worship the lord in the beauty of holiness let the whole earth tremble before him tell it out among the nations that the lord his king he has made the world so firm that it cannot be moved he will judge the peoples with equity let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad that the sea thunder and all that is in it let the fields be joyful and all that is in them let all the trees of the wood shout for joy before the lord for he comes he comes to judge the earth with righteousness he will judge the world and the peoples with his truth a wonderful sound in which not just humanity but all living things by their being are singing praise to their creator as a new day begins i'm turning now to the epistle to the philippians and we're beginning it so chapter one and i'm reading from verses 1 to 11 this morning paul and timothy servants of christ jesus to all the saints in christ jesus who are at philippi with the bishops and the deacons grace to you and peace from god our father and the lord jesus christ i thank my god in all my remembrance of you always in every prayer of mine for you making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now and i am sure of this that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of jesus christ it is right for me to feel this way about you all because i hold you in my heart for you are all partakers with me of grace both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel for god is my witness how i yearn for you all with the affection of christ jesus and it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of christ filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through jesus christ to the glory and praise of god what a wonderful beginning to any letter which any community might receive and it gives the sense of paul's real affection for that church in philippi let's think where paul is to start with paul himself is in prison he tells us that and traditionally and i've no reason to doubt that the tradition is right but we'll talk about other places that might be right traditionally he is thought to be at his final imprisonment in rome some have put forward the fact that this might have been written from his imprisonment in caesarea some have even posited an imprisonment in ephesus it seems to me that the long tradition of the centuries has never been challenged properly enough with good facts to change my mind that paul is here in prison in rome he's physically in terms of journeying come to the end of his course and he is a prisoner of the emperor a roman citizen awaiting a capital charge to be tried that means that he has to be day and night although he's been given freedom to see his friends and also to speak to people who visit him and also to write many letters nevertheless he is physically chained to a soldier day and night how long that chain is it's hard to speculate but enough probably to give him freedom to move around and the soldier will change watch by watch and we shall find out tomorrow that it is a member of the praetorian guard which once again suggests rome and the praetorian guards are the soldiers who guard the emperor and the emperor is nero i'm happy to accept the fact that this is probably the year 58 and that is set out in uh full terms by someone who was born in this precinct and became a great scholar john a t robinson bishop john robinson and he was above all else a great new testament scholar and he certainly saw this as one of the letters paul wrote from prison shows the morning is getting underway if russell is crowing like that so we've got to this particular time where paul is there under guard totally constrained and he's in rome so the only way that he can contact those with whom he wants conversation is by letter and by messenger and he sends those who are with him in rome to deliver those letters some of them go to one place some go to another they come and they go and sometimes and we read this at the end of his epistles sometimes he's lonely of them all and there's that really poignant sentence which we read saying only luke is with me now on one occasion but as i say they come and go and he's proud of them all and he's sending this particular letter to a community he is most fond of philippi you remember how in acts 16 by a vision he sets out with others from churace right on the tip of asia minor turkey and goes across to europe if we talk in modern terms he makes the continental journey and finds himself in greece and the roman town eventually having landed at the coast he travels up to philippi remember what he finds there for this is foreign land and he and his companions must have been feeling rather nervous about taking things across to europe there was no real distinction because of course it was all part of the roman empire and uh the common greek was spoken everywhere and the law of rome was still there what was different was that he probably wasn't going to find a synagogue there and also he had to look hard on the sabbath day to find people playing with he found them and among them remember he found lydia who was after listening to him baptized and her home became the center of the believers there how so many of the churches started at home and the breaking of bread on the first day of the week became the most important thing to them so that that kind of worship started really in philippi so paul is right to love that community which has supported him sent him a gift by epilogus and that gift would have been in resources to keep him in money while he was a prisoner in rome living at his own expense and that gift is very precious but as paul will say it's not the gift it's the love that sent it that counts well let's remember then that he is unable to move around and is constrained by that chain will come across that again and again but it doesn't stop him ministering by letter by human contact through messengers but also as we'll find tomorrow by the people who are listening to him while he has conversations with those who come to see him and among those as we'll see are soldiers on duty change him if you like this has been a time for us of lockdown but people in the past have managed in all sorts of ways in words and physical journeying to keep in touch if we look at the calendar of our church today we see that henry martin who died of plague in the uh turkish town of turkat in 1812 that's in the middle of the black sea province of anatolia and he was journeying from india into persia trying to get to isfahan because he as a young man and a chaplain in india he had translated the new testament into urdu into persian into judeo-pasic he translated the psalms into persian even the book of common prayer for he was an anglican priest into urdu and he is taking the gift of his new testament in persian to isfahan and he gets caught by a lockdown shall we say in to cat because of the plague and there he dies but his work went on through his translations through the words through those journeys this is a a day also when we remember that in liverpool a piece was performed for the first time by the orchestra the orchestra of the liverpool orchestral society someone had dedicated them to them at peace and to their leader alfred rodvald and it was performed on this day in 1901 it was the composer said a frantic success and the composer was the redwood elgar and the piece was pomp and circumstance march number one forget words there were no words it was simply an orchestral march and as elgar says a frantic success and two days later without elgar and his wife present in the queen's hall in london sir henry wood conducted that orchestral march and when it finished the audience stood up and and and shouted their joy at this orchestral piece with uh a quotation pomp and circumstance taken from shakespeare's othello as its title and it is the only orchestral piece in the problems history to have been encored twice all the way through since then of course it's been given words and with those words has become a staple of the last night of the proms but let's think of elgar a composer still making his way that his communication through music in the confidence of that march is something that we give thanks for today of course and for all his works in oratorios but we remember today also that this is the day on which the cellist jacqueline duprey died in 1987. she was one of the great players of elgar's reflection at the time of the great war which was played out in his cello concerto the simplest of melodies and one that spoke from the depths of his heart of his anguish about what was happening jacqueline duprey played it and with sir john barbaroli conducting became one of the great players of that piece and then at the age of 28 she had to give up playing because of multiple sclerosis and she lived for oh almost 20 more years but she was imprisoned by that multiple sclerosis from expressing herself from the cello [Music] well in our situation across the world many people like saint paul are finding themselves chained somehow physically held by lockdown or by human situations and yet at the same time there is a chance even in that situation to communicate their heart and soul as hell guarded and as jacqueline duprey did in that great recording and we ourselves pray for all those who feel themselves constrained this morning wherever they are but we take courage from that lovely beginning of the letter to the philippians in which paul wished them gifts of grace and peace and the reading of that epistle together will be i think a great gift to us this week as we think of the situation of our world and the sense of humanity once again needing freedom but in its memories as poor did remembering the love and joy of the past and communicating that to those who actually gave it to him at that time so let's say our path on this particular day and give thanks for this morning and the gift of the new day as our opening prayers always say today we're praying in the anglican communion for the diocese of quebec in canada for bruce myers and his diocese and the diocese of coventry in england and for christopher coxworth and his diocese and the diocese of krishna godavari in south india and george cornelius tantipudi the bishop there and his diocese and here in this diocese as we pray for justin archbishop of canterbury for rose bishop of dover for tim bishop at lambeth we pray for the parish of holy trinity margate and for the priests there clifford stocking and the cure at john huffman and all the community that they look after so bring your own prayers as we say the prayer for this day oh god for as much as without you we are not able to please you mercifully grant that your holy spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts through jesus christ our lord amen so we say each in our own language and each in our own way the prayer that jesus taught us our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever are men moment of silence now for our own prayers the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of god and if his son jesus christ our lord and the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you upon those whom you love and those whom you would pray for today and always amen